'Nigel Farage appears to be genuinely enjoying himself most of the time.' Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

Behold the rise of Ukip: an Alan Partridge thought experiment that has broken out of the lab and infected millions. Yes, millions. I've just read that Ukip have utterly triumphed in the local elections, and are now in full control of the government, the police, the NHS and the armed forces. Nigel Farage is scheduled to be coronated at Westminster Abbey tomorrow afternoon live on BBC1, complete with Dimbleby commentary and Red Arrow fly-past. Speaking of flight, in line with official Ukip policy, anti-aircraft guns are already in operation outside Gatwick and Heathrow, blasting all incoming planes out of the sky in case they contain Bulgarian immigrants, Romanian immigrants, asylum seekers, halal butchers, gay spouses, Capricorns, or people on an unfamiliar mobile phone tariff we don't like the sound of. Ukip's total victory has transformed the electoral landscape for ever, from a world of three-party politics to a single-party dominion set to last 500,000 years. Also, it's now legal to smoke in creches.

Well, nearly. Here's what happened: Ukip won a load of council seats. This despite fielding some candidates apparently selected at random by throwing a butterfly net over the internet. Days before the polls opened, the Tories tried to make hay by supplying the press with an exhaustive dossier of kerr-azy online goofs committed by Ukip candidates. These bonkers hi-jinks included, in one case, apparently making a Nazi salute in a Facebook snap – although the accused claimed the image was taken out of context, and that he was actually reaching for a friend's mobile phone when the shutter clicked, freezing him for ever in a pose that failed to accurately represent his political views. The same thing happened repeatedly to Hitler, who was often caught out by photographers while innocently trying to point at flocks of starlings with all five fingers at once.

Ukip countered by saying this trawl through their candidates' online histories was unfair, and that if they had the time and resources to forensically examine the Facebook posts of every Tory councillor, they would doubtless uncover even worse horrors. The takeaway message for wannabe politicians is this: your social media footprint is a skidmark of shame and a weapon for your enemies. Imagine the chaos when the parties finally develop technology that allows them to peer inside each other's souls and share whatever dark material lurks within. Imagine being able to access George Osborne's dreams. Imagine publishing the contents using one of those 3D printer things that are destined to ruin the world. Imagine that, because it's bloody well coming.

When they weren't calling Ukip extremists, the Tories called them "clowns", which is a strange insult to fling at the opposition when your own most popular MP – Boris Johnson – is perpetually a hair's breadth away from tumbling onscreen in white-and-red facepaint. Acting the buffoon is a winning political strategy, as Farage has discovered. It appeals to the gut.

There's something fundamentally unconvincing, not to mention nauseating, about the wet-eyed brand of pleading and apologetic earnestness repeatedly adopted by Miliband and Clegg. It's as though, having accurately detected a general level of public revulsion with politics, they have decided the best tactic to worm their way back into our affections is to repeatedly say sorry for existing while tugging at our sleeves. Brr. Horrible. In the words of Ferris Bueller: "You can't respect somebody who kisses your ass. It just doesn't work."

Cameron is stuck somewhere in the middle – being prime minister he doesn't have to whine for our approval, but being unpopular, he can't be seen to be too relaxed either. That's why he constantly wears the faintly frowny expression of a man trying to carefully extract an especially tricky block in a Very Important game of Jenga. Another thing his face reminds me of: a newsreader trying to look serious while reading from the autocue about the death of someone they have never heard of.

By contrast, Farage, like Johnson, appears to be genuinely enjoying himself most of the time, like a delighted Aquaphibian guffawing in a bumper car. And this enjoyment instantly endears him to a huge section of the population on a level that transcends – or at least sidesteps – politics. Many people who hate Nigel Farage the reactionary throwback find themselves liking Nigel Farage the chortling oaf. Being a chortling oaf not only makes you critically bulletproof – oafish chortling being a perpetual escape pod – it functions as a kind of cloaking device, somehow obscuring the notion that you're a politician at all. Farage and Johnson are widely viewed as down-to-earth outsiders, despite their backgrounds and policies marking them out as anything but.

In other words, the best way to succeed as a politician is to pretend that you aren't one. Which is both an interesting philosophical bind, and a hell of a mess for the future.

Charlie Brooker: With so many horrific stories around this year, it's no wonder we were sidetracked by baking and selfies. And between government surveillance and 'bongo bongo land' many of us were tempted to give up on politics for good